Instant Pot Vegetable Broth

Well folks, it’s fall and if you’re not talking about pumpkin spice everything, then you must be suffering from the first round of bugs making their way around this time of year. September in my area is when kids go back to school. It is perfectly planned to fall at the same time as the chill hits the air…and the boogers hit the desk.

So, needless to say, my son got a cold and like all good siblings he has been taught to share with his sister, so now his sister has a cold. And if the kiddos have colds, you bet momma has a cold she needs to be fighting off. With all the comforting, cuddling, and nose-wiping I’m doing right now, who has time to cook? In my house we love a deliciously brothy and simple soup when we’re not feeling well (we’ve dubbed it “sick soup”), but I really don’t want to babysit a pot of broth while I could be resting (well, I am a mom, so resting is really code for reading about the Pigeon or Franklin or something). Luckily, I have the hottest kitchen gadget of 2016: the Instant Pot!

If you haven’t heard about the Instant Pot by now, it’s simply an electric pressure cooker, aka a pressure cooker where I don’t worry about blowing up my kitchen by accident, and it’s simply revolutionary when it comes to making food without the need to babysit it! Now, if you have an Instant Pot but have never made Instant Pot vegetable broth before, you’re in luck, because it’s probably the easiest thing that you’ll ever make. And if you don’t have an Instant Pot but still want to try out this broth, you can totally do that too – just simmer over medium-low heat for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

The ingredients in my Instant Pot vegetable broth are very flexible. You’ll notice in the recipe I call for approximately 3 cups of any vegetables (in addition to the other vegetables I mention). This might seem like a strange thing to call for, but really what I’m asking for is your kitchen scraps, which, if you’re like me, you’ve been saving up in a large freezer bag (my “broth bag”) specifically to use for vegetable broth. Some of the things I throw in my bag are:

asparagus stalks

celery stalks and/or leaves

kale stems

clean cobs of corn (where I cut the corn off – not the ones we ate off of!)

ends of beans

the bottom stalks of broccoli

These are just some of the things I put in my bag, but you can put any clean, uncooked vegetables in your freezer bag. Having a bag ready to go makes vegetable broth simple an easy to prepare, as the other ingredients are common fridge staples.

Next time you need some broth, avoid the store bought stuff and make your own healthy and from-scratch version of Instant Pot vegetable broth!

Comments 9

Thank you for posting this! Your broth is the deep, rich color of what I have been making on the stovetop using freezer scraps and an everything-but-the-kitchen sink approach. Now I can more confidently make it in my IP with a more structured plan. This is exactly what I was looking for: I use veggie broth instead of water or other broths–so easy to fix, and I knew the Instant Pot would make it so easy. Thanks, Ritu!

LOVE your seasoning choices, turmeric & garam masala, can’t wait to taste the results. We also take this one more step for flavor & we roast the onions, garlic, carrots, celery (stalk portion only), tomatoes and the bag of random veggie scraps in the oven before making stock. I will make this in our IP, going forward, cause time . . . like land, they just aren’t making more of it.